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21st Century, Y County, C City, G Nation.
A typical inland county town in G Nation — that's where our protagonist spent his entire life, in a place where the pace of living was slow and ordinary.
Aside from his nine-to-five job, his greatest joy came from the famous anime works from R Nation, the country next door.
He wasn't a fan of the original manga; instead, he loved watching the beautifully produced anime adaptations on his domestic smartphone.
He watched everything — but his favorites were Dragon Ball, Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece.
Since the first three had already officially ended, his one true passion now was One Piece — the legendary anime that had been running for twenty-three years.
He didn't read the manga; every week he waited to watch the anime, even if each new episode only offered ten or so minutes of real content.
Our protagonist's life could easily be described as a perfect reflection of the ordinary people of G Nation.
Since childhood, he'd studied tirelessly under his parents' expectations, hoping to get into a good university one day.
And for a while, everything went according to plan. As a child, he was an excellent student, just as his parents had wished.
But starting in junior high, when he first encountered novels and anime, the heavy pressure of daily life began to weigh on him.
He became obsessed with stories and animation — and from that point on, his life began to drift away from his parents' vision and down a different path.
In the end, as expected, he didn't do well on his college entrance exams. He entered a third-rate university in C City, the prefecture that governed Y County.
After graduating, he followed his parents' wishes once again, returning to Y County to begin his adult life.
There, he met the woman he loved. Being a traditional man, he dated with the intent to marry.
Marriage, a child — and so began a repetitive life of nine-to-five routines in that slow-paced little county.
If not for his beloved family and his love for One Piece, he wasn't sure he could have endured the crushing weight of everyday life.
Now nearing thirty, he had a career, a wife, and a child.
Aside from spending time with them, only when he watched anime could he feel — however fleetingly — the illusion that he still had control over his own life.
He often felt that, apart from meeting his wife, his life had been full of setbacks.
At every major turning point, he always seemed to take the worst possible path.
Every time, he regretted it deeply. He believed that aside from having his wife and child, the rest of his life had been a failure.
Because of that, he even blamed novels and anime for leading him astray, and for a time, he completely stopped touching them.
But later, as he grew older and became a father, with greater responsibilities and a calmer outlook on life, his resentment faded.
Now, nearing thirty, he had given in to reality. He rarely read novels anymore — apart from watching the weekly One Piece episodes, his life had boiled down to just two goals:
Work hard to earn money for his family, and raise his child well.
Sometimes, even those two simple goals felt exhausting. But there was no other way — people have to grow up, even if it's not the life they once dreamed of.
That weekend, as usual, he waited for the new One Piece episode to air.
The anime was slower than the manga, but it had already reached the Wano arc.
He watched excitedly, waving his arms and laughing as the scenes played out — completely absorbed.
But tragedies often strike suddenly, heedless of human will.
In a cliché turn of fate, our protagonist watched One Piece on his domestic phone while it was charging, since the battery was almost dead.
When tragedy struck, even he would never have believed that this was how his life would end.
The phone short-circuited. The electric current surged — and he was electrocuted to death on the spot. No one noticed for quite some time.
It was only much later that his wife and child discovered his lifeless body.
At the moment of his death, he had no consciousness. It wasn't until he awakened in another world that he realized he had left his old one behind.
He couldn't bear the thought of leaving his wife and child. He longed to return — but there was no way back from this strange, unfamiliar world.
When he woke, he already understood everything: he had been reborn, his soul now inhabiting another's body.
This new body was different from his previous one — young, around seventeen or eighteen years old.
He awoke on a beach. The moment he opened his eyes, he was greeted by the vast, boundless ocean.
In his previous life, he had never truly seen the sea. Only through screens — never so close, never so real.
Unlike those protagonists in transmigration novels, he hadn't inherited the original owner's memories.
Looking into a puddle, he saw that this body didn't look too different from his old one: black hair, black eyes, yellow skin, even about the same height — around 1.7 meters.
The only difference was that he was much thinner now. In his past life, he'd never been slim — always well-fed, always soft around the edges.
Who would've thought his long-forgotten dream of losing weight would come true here, of all places?
He tried hard to recall any memories from this new body. He needed to understand where he was — what kind of world he had entered.
Earlier, while gazing at the ocean, he'd seen a strange creature leap from the waves — a monster with the head of a bull and the body of a fish — before it vanished beneath the surface.
That was when he became certain: this wasn't Earth. He had arrived in another world.
A wild suspicion formed in his mind, but he didn't dare believe it. Could it really be that world?
He tried harder to recover the body's memories, desperate to confirm his guess.
By the time he stopped, the sun had risen high overhead. His stomach was growling, yet his mind remained blank — not a single clear memory surfaced.
Just when despair began to settle in — perhaps even heaven itself couldn't stand to watch him struggle any longer.
His effort was rewarded, if only slightly.
He managed to recall just one thing: the name of this body.
Nothing else.
Matsurize — a name without a surname. From that alone, he could tell this body's original owner hadn't come from a noble background.
Still, he was the optimistic sort. He quickly accepted it.
From now on, he would be Matsurize.